Introduction

This chapter aims to cover those sectors of the state public sector (1.2.3) which, unlike the autonomous administrative entities dealt with earlier (6.3), can be defined as entities (entidades) or enterprises (empresas) rather than bodies (organismos) because of their more active involvement in the market economy. Some attention will also be paid to their counterparts at regional and local level which, according to some definitions, do not form part of the state public sector, although they are clearly part of the ‘public sector’ in its widest sense.

The Spanish Constitution of 1978, while recognising and protecting in article 38 the right to free enterprise, also acknowledges, in article 128, the right of the state to intervene in the economy in the public interest. Article 129, as well as providing the framework for the state's substantial involvement in social security and other welfare programmes (6.for example), also states that ‘the authorities will effectively promote the diverse forms of participation in public ownership’. Thus, the Constitution appeared to be recognising the mixed economy inherited by post-Franco policy-makers – an economy in which, for historical, political and economic reasons, the state sector had acquired a large share of the economic cake (1.1.2).

Under Franco, the pragmatic approach to economic policy had led to the creation of a complex web of entities which seemed to possess a momentum of their own, often removed from their original objectives and the prevailing needs of the time.